Tacoma Holiday Food & Gift Festival Tickets

This years holiday food and gift festival was a lot better than the previous year. There were more specialty vendors and I really found some great gifts for my family. Nothing on the store bought level. Thanks also for one ticket all days of the festival, but I really have to say having the police block off the exit to get in was the worst. What a fiasco. Took an hour just to get to the parking lots (waiting in lines). That's never happened before. Hooray for a good festival.

The cost of the ticket plus parking was nearly $50. That's a lot to have the "opportunity"to shop in person. Armed with a list of vendors from the show's website I could have used that money to shop from home since most of them have websites. There were few Christmas themed vendors and a lot of repetition of food items such as vinegars, honey and garlic. Since it was a long walk back to my car, I only bought a couple of small items and was disappointed overall in the holiday themed gift show.

We went afternoon on Sunday and it was perfect crowd size. Only thing was food shut down around 2 pm. Please have more chairs set up around the large room for those with mobility issues for resting.

We left early due to the fact that it was packed with people! I think it should be limited as to how many people can be in there at one time. If there was a fire -there would be no way for everyone to get out! I won't be attending again in the future.

The vendors were all great! A lot of the same products as years before. Which is nice if you want to find the same products. The food choices and set up was fair and not available throughout the whole time of the festival. It should be available for lunch through dinner time and with different vendors or food trucks products. This would be another way for local businesses to share their products with the community.

It was a great event with lots to see. Just a couple of things that could’ve made it better. -I really didn’t like the aggressive sales people. -Missed the donuts. -more live performers! Maybe some holiday show performances on the cooking stage - more food variety - also $5 for a water bottle is ridiculous

Would prefer more homemade crafters. Disappointed in the number of high pressure salespeople. This is not something I’d go back to.

The Tacoma Dome is not known for accessible events. We have spent many hours in traffic for concerts. I am about done attending events here, as this festival took one hour and 45 minutes of traffic just sitting off the freeway exit ramp. This is the norm for them. We live very close by and it's a shame that we cannot attend events due to the terrible traffic flow/infrastructure that is the Tacoma Dome

It was ok. A lot of vendors that were there had nothing to do with Christmas. I will say I was surprised there weren’t more food stands ( only had two) and food wasn’t good. People were in line with their food and asking for their money back, so we didn’t buy it.

We went on a Friday and the show was a good time as always. I will say that while we bought a lot of snacks, candy, dip mixes, etc. we did not find many unique gifts as we have in the past. Parking was $40, a block away from the event because the event lot was full. That was a bummer. Also the freeway exit to the dome was closed and the street below the dome had electrical construction going on for a new building and was blocked. We sat down there for 40 minutes and moved 2 blocks before I went around and found a back way in. Maybe coordinate better with the city next time? Also, one of the vendors told us that they heard the event was bought out by a new company and they will be changing it up a lot next year as well as raising booth prices significantly so there may be fewer private sellers and more corporate vendors, and if so, we probably will not attend. We have been going to this annually for as long as I can remember. 20 years or more??? It will be sad if it goes a route that takes away the holiday fun.